News

Union Bank of the Philippines entrusts FINARTIS’ Prospero 365 solution for Trust and Wealth Management activities

UnionBank’s Wealth department joins FINARTIS’s community of users of its Prospero 365 solution for wealth management and fund administration

Fintech provider FINARTIS SA has added Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank)’s Wealth department to the community of users of its Prospero 365 solution for wealth management and fund administration. This comes two years after successfully implementing Prospero for the Trust department of UnionBank.

FINARTIS will provide the bank’s Wealth department with a highly automated platform integrating all front- to-back processes on multiple asset classes. The solution will allow UnionBank to provide tailored services to their high net worth (HNW) clients with advanced risk monitoring of their portfolios. Clients will be given anytime-anywhere digital access to their portfolios via digital wealth management portal and mobile application.

“With numerous technological advancements and tighter regulations setting the scene of the wealth management industry today, local banks are compelled to not only enhance their level and speed of service but also to have solid risk mitigation processes in place,” said Kimberly Espiritu, Regional Sales Manager at FINARTIS. “Foreign banks expanding their local footprint across wealth management and private banking also increases the competition in this dynamic landscape. UnionBank can continue relying on our smart technology to manage complex financial operations in the most cost-effective and efficient way that also benefits from a unique combination of Swiss Wealth Management expertise and Philippine local presence.”

“We chose to partner with FINARTIS again after a careful selection process for our Private Bankers in terms of mobility, user experience, extensiveness and caliber of service. Since our Trust Banking Group was already using Prospero 365, we found it a natural extension for our Private Banking Business,” said Jose Emmanuel U. Hilado, CFO, Treasurer and Senior Executive Vice President at UnionBank. “This project with FINARTIS is in line with UnionBank’s digital transformation efforts to achieve operational excellence by automating compliance rules and processing transactions in true straight-through-process while still allowing flexibility to tailor-fit our services for our HNW clients.”

“FINARTIS is delighted to work with UnionBank. A quick time to market is very important to the bank and thanks to our ready-to-use wealth management solution, we can achieve a successful go-live in line with the bank’s objectives. FINARTIS can leverage both its global delivery capabilities and local team to ensure they reach this objective. We are confident that Prospero will offer the bank a significant competitive advantage,” said Jean-Luc Freymond, Chairman and CEO at FINARTIS.

About Union Bank of the Philippines – www.unionbankph.com

UnionBank stands out for its strategy, execution and performance. While many banks are going for size and market share through large balance sheets, UnionBank has followed a highly focused differentiation strategy that emphasizes on innovation and service with a clear technological bias. It has championed e-commerce in the Philippines and achieved success in B2B and B2G, creating electronic communities for multinational and domestic corporations and key government institutions. In 2004, the bank achieved a breakthrough in B2C through its eCard for 1.4 million members of the Government Service Insurance System.

The bank is continuously cited as among the best banks in the Philippines and Asia by international financial publications like The Asian Banker Journal, Euromoney and Asiamoney.

UnionBank’s common stock is listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange and trades under the symbol UBP.

About FINARTIS – www.finartis.com

FINARTIS previously operated under the name of SAGE which was founded in 1986 as a service company doing bespoke software developments in Switzerland. Financial organizations implement FINARTIS’s solutions to be able to serve their customers better, leading to better client retention and improved margins. FINARTIS’s out-of-the-box digitally-enhanced client relationship solutions can be implemented fast and help improve front office productivity to bring more value-added services to its clients who have been able to reach middle- and back-office operations excellence through intelligent, automated straight-through-processes.

FINARTIS’s main product, Prospero, is an integrated suite of financial applications dedicated to Wealth Management and Fund Management.

Excellence in Wealth Management Software Solutions

FINARTIS (formerly SAGE), has been named winner of the Excellence in Wealth Management Software Solutions award in the Global Fund Awards 2017 by Corporate Livewire. Honoring the outstanding performers in the financial services industry, the Awards recognized all aspects of the funds sector and awarded those who stood out with their innovation and excellence in hedge funds, financial services, finance law, asset management, and in overcoming global economic challenges.

The award recognized FINARTIS’s outstanding services offered through its Prospero Wealth Management solution and its commitment to the financial industry, evidenced by both the innovations it achieved for the past 12 months and planned for future releases.

“Winning this award is gratifying as it recognized the stability and consistency that we bring as well as our ability to innovate and adapt to changes,” said Jean-Luc Freymond, CEO of FINARTIS.

For more information, please visit Global Fund Awards.

FINARTIS at the TOAP Convention 2018

FINARTIS (formerly SAGE) was one of the sponsors of this year’ Trust Officers Association of the Philippines (TOAP) annual convention which was held in Boracay, Philippines from February 23-25. The TOAP has members from of banks and investment houses duly licensed to perform trust, other fiduciary and investment functions.

FINARTIS’s Chief Executive Officer, Jean-Luc Freymond, gave a keynote at the event on using smart digital technologies to compete against the market leaders.

For more information on this event, please contact FINARTIS or call us at +65 6911 6640 (Singapore).

SAGE becomes FINARTIS

For over thirty years, we’ve used our passion and creativity to help wealth managers achieve the best results: lower risks, better returns, improved client relationships.

For us, Finance has always been about creating a safe environment to preserve wealth for future generations, so that what we achieve in the here and now can be passed on to our children and our grandchildren.

We’ve always been driven by our passion for that work. By the opportunity to apply our skills and imagination to the myriad functions that smart technologies enable. By the chance to help others to build a brighter future. That lies at the heart of everything we do.

Times have changed and we’ve changed with them. An age of low yields and high regulation has created new challenges for wealth managers. At the same time, new technologies offer vast new opportunities. In rising to those occasions, we’ve discovered the value that comes from treating technology as an art form.

Art brings a fresh dimension to the way that we work. It’s about thinking creatively, looking for fresh perspectives on every topic. It’s about finding the connections between seemingly unrelated ideas and events. It’s about working at the edge of our potential, constantly pushing ourselves to achieve more as we transform vision into action.

Our vision is clear: a place where we create even smarter systems by combining the logic of software engineering and the calculation of finance with the creativity of the arts.

For these reasons, we have chosen to change our name for one that embodies our vision. As of March 1^st, we are FINARTIS.

Jean-Luc Freymond

CEO

SAGE: A Leading Software Publisher Dedicated to the Wealth Management Industry

One of 10 Most Trusted Asset & Wealth Management Solution Providers of 2017

By Insights Success

Wealth Managers traditionally work in an exceptionally unpredictable and competitive environment. This complexity originates from the constantly changing regulations that they should comply with, and has inherited cost as they have to alter procedures and execute innovations. Further intricacy is included by market instability and historically low yields, making it hard to find the appropriate risk-return combination.

With the technological advancements taking place rapidly, the landscape is getting more dynamic. Besides traditional competitors, the industry is seeing disruptive actors, for example, Robo Advisors entering the market. Other than expanding rivalry, they are additionally changing the tenets of the game, and putting pressure on conventional players to reevaluate the way they do business. Since these actors are bringing more modern and proficient methods for getting things done, clients hope to have the capacity to play out any activity related to their funds anywhere, at any time and for the lowest possible fee. These increase strain on existing players, not exclusively to enhance their level and speed of service, but also to bring down their charges. What’s more; we should not overlook that the last crisis is still exceptionally present in customer’s psyches, so they additionally expect Wealth Managers to have solid risk mitigation processes.

Recognizing this difficulty, SAGE was founded in 1986 to help Wealth Managers serve their clients better. Emerged from the hard work of Jean-Luc Freymond, CEO – who joined SAGE in 1995 – and his aim to put clients before everything else, today, SAGE is a global financial technology company and banking software provider dedicated to Wealth Management industry. He has transformed what was initially a service company doing bespoke software developments in Switzerland into a software publisher specialized in finance.

Along with a comprised team of Banking and Fintech specialists who believe today’s smart technology can change the way High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) interact with their Wealth Managers, SAGE helps Wealth Managers make their task simpler and serve their clients better.

SAGE’ clients rely on its smart technology to manage complex financial operations in the most cost-effective and efficient way. They implement SAGE’ solutions to be able to serve their clients better, leading to superior client retention and improved margins. SAGE offers out-of-the-box digitally-enhanced client relationship solutions that can be implemented fast. It helps improve front office productivity to bring more value-added services to the clients.

Managing Complex Financial Operations in the Most Cost-Effective and Efficient Way
Jean-Luc started developing bespoke ERP applications for many industries such as retail, subscription management and banking. This was an important phase because it allowed him and the team to broaden their perspective and come up with more creative ways of approaching the problems that they helped resolve. Jean-Luc, then, decided to transform the company into a true software publisher and focus on one single niche where he felt SAGE had the most added value.

However, getting clients to trust their strategic wealth management business with a new system from a small self-financed company with very few references was the biggest struggle ‘The Team SAGE’ had to face. But, the team was very fortunate to count Merrill Lynch as an early adopter of Prospero for their Global Wealth Management activities (later sold to Julius Baer). They helped the company to come up with the right value proposition but also to grow its user base.

Being Available to Clients Whenever, Wherever Required
For more than last three decades, SAGE has been treating its clients with the same level of attention and personalized service as Swiss Private Banks do with their customers. Offering a unique combination of Swiss Wealth Management expertise and local presence in the markets, SAGE prides itself on being available to clients whenever wherever required.

Unlike its competition that offers separate solutions that they connect to cover all requirements, SAGE offers a truly integrated solution that combines all the features needed to manage investment portfolios and funds administration.

As a result of its simplified system setup and a rules-based logic that offers great flexibility without having to code, helping managers to better meet the increasing expectations of their clients, SAGE takes much lesser time to market than its competition.

Prospero, Founding Block for Wealth Managers
Among its varied range of innovative solutions, SAGE’ Prospero system is the founding block that Wealth Managers require offering the level of service their clients expect. With Prospero, customers can achieve operational excellence by automating compliance verification and by executing and processing orders in true Straight Through Process. Prospero has a high level of automation while still allowing managers to tailor services for their clients. They can do so by offering multiple channels to interact with their clients such as traditional channels like head-office, branches, IVR and more modern channels like Chatbots, Web and Mobile Apps and Robo Advisory.

BlackSwan, Constantly Evolving and Back-tested Financial Platform
Due to its BlackSwan Portfolio Optimization and Risk Management System, SAGE lets managers build trust with their clients. Additionally, it supports alternative asset classes such as Private Equity, Structured Products and Derivatives so managers can offer more diversified products.

With its BlackSwan System that uses advanced quantitative finance models, SAGE also helps institutions make better investment decisions, reduce risks and increase returns. Then it helps them by offering a digital self-service platform for their clients, allowing them to perform all types of operations 24×7 from the comfort of their home, also provides dashboards and automated workflows for client-facing staff to improve their service. Furthermore, it provides the solid back-end system needed to be able to offer innovative products and services 24×7.

Continuing Investing into Building Smart Products
To tackle the ever-growing competition in the Wealth Management industry, SAGE’ main strategy is to continue investing in building smart products that are better at helping clients run their business. The company has hired professionals with both wealth management and technical experience to develop and implement its innovative solutions to the industry’s pain points. Besides, SAGE wants to make the system affordable to as many institutions both regarding implementation and on-going operation. This has prompted SAGE to develop an intelligent system configurator that performs most of the system setup automatically using business logic rather than code or scripts as required by similar competing systems.

Jean-Luc believes the industry is facing historically low yields combined with higher regulation and compliance costs. Second, although we see new and disruptive fin-techs entering the market, there is little true innovation as far as financial products are concerned.

“Clients generally have less trust in financial institutions to preserve their wealth and beat indexes which can push clients to settle for cheap products such as ETFs with a good asset allocation and low fees as offered by Robo Advisors. So in our point of view institutions that want to preserve their margins, need to invest in their user experience, breadth and quality of service and democratize alternative asset classes,” Jean-Luc asserts.

Future Roadmap
Going ahead in the future, SAGE’ primary focus is to automate the back-office operations further. “We believe they can be fully automated with better communication between the actors. To speed up the process we are focusing on using Artificial Intelligence technology and we are currently exploring practical use of AI such as document processing, investment suitability, transactions exception detection and resolution, asset allocation and profiling, and tackling compliance and fraud issues. Then, as mentioned above, we want to make the system as affordable as possible. So, we will continue making the system simpler to operate and implement to make it affordable even to boutique institutions such as small fund managers or small family offices that are faced with the same complexity as large organizations but can’t afford a large team,” Jean-Luc concludes.

About the Key Executive
Mr. Jean-Luc Freymond serves as the Chief Executive Officer of SAGE. Jean-Luc used to be one of the significant architects of Prospero, SAGE’ suite of financial services software solution. Before joining SAGE, Jean-Luc worked for Swiss banking giant UBS and has more than 20 years of experience in systems development and the management of banking projects. He has implemented several projects of considerable scope and led several teams of developers and analysts. He has lectured on banking technology at the University of Lausanne and contributed to several industry expert panels and webinars.

He started his career at UBS in commodity finance. He is also a self-taught developer and during his studies, he was freelancing by doing bespoke development for businesses in Switzerland. That puts him right at the intersection of finance and technology. He received both his BA in Management and his Postgraduate Diploma in European Law from the University of Lausanne, and received his EO/MIT Entrepreneurial Masters Program from MIT.

*This article first appeared in November’s issue of Insight Success: 10 Most Trusted Asset & Wealth Management Solution Providers 2017.

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For more information on this news, please contact SAGE Group SA at +41 653 64 01 (Switzerland) or +65 6827 44 28 (Singapore)

TOAP Annual Summit 2017

Date: 17 – 18 October 2017

SAGE Group SA will be at the Trust Officers Association of the Philippines (TOAP)‘s annual summit to be held at the New World Makati Hotel from October 17-18.

The theme for this year’s summit is “Driving Change” with the 2-day program focusing on the Philippine Pension System and the Collective Investment Scheme Law (CISL). The introduction of the Philippine Equity & Retirement Account (PERA) to the local market late last year compelled the industry to take a hard look at the Philippine pension system in its entirety. The CISL, if enacted, shall change the CIS framework of the unit trust, mutual funds and insurance. In its path, both developments shall provide pros and cons to be faced by the stakeholders.

Philippe De La Clergerie and Kimberly Espiritu will be representing SAGE at this event.

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For more information on this event, please contact SAGE or call us at +65 6911 6640

Philippines: Market Trends

Customer-centricity and advisory using technology

By Kimberly Espiritu, Regional Sales Manager

Assets under management by robo-advisors in Asia is expected to grow to $2.2 trillion by 2020, with target market segments ranging from the average investor to high net worth individuals (Hartung, 2017). Regional and global foreign banks, apart from local competitors, have also made headway in the Philippines, aiming for a share of revenues across different business lines. With recent banking campaigns focusing on HNW/ UHNW customers, private banking is undeniably recognized as a fast-growing business. The rising demand for wealth management has even attracted latecomers to this segment even without decades of experience to guide their journey.

One of the strategies being used is to apply an ‘economy, business and first class’ service for existing clients. Market segmentation allows new players to easily identify target markets that will respond well, reducing challenges from competition since the attack is carefully executed for their existing clients. New players are already strong in the retail business line, making more sense for them to look at their existing clients first before targeting new ones who are tied with the leading banks.

It is, however, not as easy as it seems. Retail banks will have to do more heavy lifting than the entrenched players. Using technology in the form of robo-advisory could be employed as compensation for late entrance. Another strategy is partnering with well-known global private banks. Introducing customized solutions mixed with global expertise has received a good market response in its initial stages.

Bigger banks face the challenge of having to adopt robo-advisory in a much slower pace compared to the others due to the difficulty in modifying the behavior of an already demanding client base, and the presence of legacy system challenges. Project requirements are currently at different stages, directed towards adopting trends like robo-advisory and customer-centricity. These trends, often materializing slowly, demands flexibility in doing business from the software vendor standpoint.

A key advantage of robo-advisors is that customers receive independent investment advice and more choices at a fraction of the cost of traditional financial advisors (Hartung, 2017). This element of robo-advisory, combined with a competitive software vendor landscape, has resulted to banks requiring non-traditional licensing proposals as to make their capital investments smaller – another takeaway to justify their business case to implement technology solutions. The SaaS pricing is a trending business model we can expect from the market. This kind of pricing model demanded by clients is quite a recent behavior, given that banks were always accustomed to strictly perpetual licensing models only.

Another new business requirement, at least in the Philippines, is the cloud implementation model. This was only introduced about a year ago, although it is an option that requires more study. Banks were always open to this idea for its advantages but are discouraged because of the strict guidelines of the central bank, particularly along the lines of security and client data privacy. The most that banks have gone for cloud models is ensure that certain software can transition from on-premise to a cloud implementation once they are ready to do so.

These market trends, behavior and timelines we have identified at this stage should help both banks and vendors alike to take the right approach for the opportunities and good challenges ahead. Incoming BSP (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) Governor Nestor Espenilla, who started his new role on 5th July 2017, aims to improve efficiency of transactions among and between banks, as well as other entities that provide financial or payment services (Rimando, 2017). One of his main goals is to make the Philippines a leading market for new mobile banking services and implementing ‘fintech’ or financial technology. To cap it off, the BSP’s support for new technology and innovations in the financial sector makes us expect the banking sector to be highly active.

References:

• Richard Hartung. 2017. The Asian Banker. [ONLINE]
  
• Lala Rimando. 2017. Who is new BSP governor Nestor Espenilla? [ONLINE]

Appointment of SAGE Group SA’s Regional Sales Manager for South East Asia

SAGE Group SA, publisher of the Prospero software solution for global private banks and financial institutions worldwide, is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Kimberly Espiritu as Regional Sales Manager. Kimberly will be responsible for business development for the banking and financial services industry in the Philippines and South East Asia out of SAGE’s Manila office.

As a sales professional, Kimberly has gained a broad and detailed knowledge of retail, wholesale and investment banking business across multiple topical areas including Risk, Compliance, Trust/Wealth Management, Transaction Banking and Lending. Combining this with her clear understanding of how new and traditional technology solutions can enable banks to achieve their strategic and tactical ambitions make her the advisor of choice for banks pursuing technology-led business strategies.

Jean-Luc Freymond, CEO of SAGE Group, states “Kimberly has a strong track record creating value for the clients she has worked with in the banking community. She enjoys an excellent reputation that lets her cultivate a strong network of relationships within the industry built on trust and respect for her professionalism.”

Kimberly has years of experience in the field of banking technology, previously holding the position of Regional Sales Manager for multiple software and consulting firms including AGDelta, CRMNEXT and Kris FinSoftware.

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For more information on this news, please contact SAGE Group SA at +63 2 555 5442 (Manila).

Fund Management: How to select the right provider in 2017

7 things to look for

by Jean-Luc Freymond, CEO of SAGE Group SA

Fund Administration is an essential service that presents an increasing importance and sensitivity in the financial industry. Institutions offering this service bear mounting responsibility as a result of more complex pricing methodologies, taxes and fees, as well as stricter regulations.

Historically, such service has been organised in silos with many human resources involved, and it has been a widely-accepted fact that Net Asset Value (NAV) validation requires a high volume of manual work. At the same time, the industry is getting more competitive and the pressure to increase margins requires fund administrators to increase their productivity while continuing to fulfil their tight Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Attempts to automate this system have often failed due to cultural and human obstacles as well as the lack of scalability and flexibility of the systems that were proposed. Organizations looking for systems to help them automate this process need to look for solutions that address both these issues by retaining simplicity in user interaction despite the complexity of the task while simultaneously providing the required flexibility to adapt to each fund’s specificities.

Reduce costs and risk
Generating Net Asset Values and unit prices is a time-critical process which requires a high degree of control and efficiency to meet pre-set deadlines. Only an effective end-to-end process with appropriate controls and automation can guarantee the consistent level of performance required.

Portfolio accounting
The ability to keep the fund’s portfolio inventory up to date is a critical function to look for. While it is expected that most systems will perform this function, organizations need to ensure the adequate handling of all the asset classes that their funds are invested in.

Corporate actions
Systems should also offer the possibility to automate and dramatically simplify the time-consuming and error-prone process of manually tracking, calculating entitlement, and processing of corporate actions. An integrated and comprehensive corporate actions solution that can process all corporate action types and is flexible enough to allow the definition of new types, is the best option.

Pricing of instruments
Pricing of financial instruments is a key process where systems differ in their level of efficiency and accuracy. Mark to market prices need to be fed automatically into the system from major data feeds. Quality and plausibility checks should be available to minimize the risk of errors and reduce the time to investigate pricing issues originating from the price source.

Fees processing and accrual accounting
Organizations should also ensure the system has the ability to automate the calculation, accrual, and posting of all types of fees. Performance fees are generally more complex and few systems fully automate more advanced functions such as equalizations.

Reconciliation
A key step in fund administration is the reconciliation of daily trade information, settlement data, transactions, and positions. Systems need to be able to automatically download this data from the custodians and perform the reconciliation and highlight discrepancies.

NAV validation and publication
The transfer agency function also needs to be fully integrated in the system to simplify the process and avoid heavy and potentially costly interfaces. It should be possible to automatically import subscriptions and redemptions from external systems or capture them using the system’s UI.

This article first appeared in Bobsguide.
For more information on this news, please contact SAGE Group SA at +41 21 653 64 01 (Switzerland) or +65 6911 6640 (Singapore).